


There is no bridge

by rinskiroo



Series: DamereyDaily2020 [6]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst, Angst and Feels, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Temporary Character Death, DamereyDaily2020, F/M, Family, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Mother-Daughter Relationship, Movie: Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Self-Discovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-27
Updated: 2020-02-27
Packaged: 2021-02-28 01:41:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22915678
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rinskiroo/pseuds/rinskiroo
Summary: There's someone waiting for Rey on the other side as she faces the choice to stay or to go back.For the Damerey Daily prompt "This bridge will only take you halfway there."
Relationships: Poe Dameron/Rey, Rey & Rey's Mother (Star Wars)
Series: DamereyDaily2020 [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1596025
Comments: 6
Kudos: 50
Collections: Damerey Daily 2020





	There is no bridge

**Author's Note:**

> Soooo writing this it really ended up being mostly Gen and about Rey and her mom. Because it's a DD prompt, I added Damerey at the end. So I tagged it both.

Rey did not imagine this life for herself. Did not think of ever leaving Jakku. Did not dare to dream of friends, of love, family.

And she never thought she’d be dead. Her life was dangerous and hard, but she knew she would survive. Death was never something she feared because she never thought it would come for her.

She could not imagine the life she found, and now that life is gone.

But if it is gone, how does she still have thought? Emotion? Surely death would be the absence of all of these things—like how her heart no longer beats; her lungs are empty of air.

_There is no death. There is the Force._

Words spring from nowhere, and yet everywhere. The surround her and fill her.

_I have taken my last steps,_ her voice somehow whispers into the darkness.

Even as the words choke out of her, she can feel a pull starting in her chest and stretching outward. Her limbs are heavy and all she wants is to lie down and find rest, but someone calls her name and tries to drag her from beyond.

Is that even possible? Her body has ceased to function.

_All things are possible in the Force._

The voice… she recognizes it. Soft and feminine. She remembers a song, or perhaps the memory of a memory. But here, now, in the Force, the connections wrap around her.

_Mother?_ The word is foreign to her.

The string tied around her heart pulls her upright. Rey finds herself standing on one side of a footbridge. What it’s covering, she cannot see, and on the other side is only fog. Around her, there is nothing—vast emptiness, and yet… Rey knows that she is not alone—was never alone.

She feels a hand wrap around hers, solid and firm. Though she notes its owner does not have a heartbeat—just like her.

“They want me to live,” Rey says. She can feel them now, more clearly, calling from the other side. Maybe they’re trying to restart her heart or breathe life into her lungs, but her spirit is not there. Her body is an empty shell.

“I want you to live, Rey,” her mother tells her. There is so much emotion rolling off of her—regret, pain, and love. Her mother is begging her to live.

“What if I want to stay?” Rey asks. Living would mean so much more than dying. Dying is easy. Dying would mean being here with what she had lost. And dying was always the fate of the Jedi.

“There is more for you out there, my sweet girl.”

"But you’re here,” Rey says, and if she were alive, there would be tears rolling down her cheeks. “Don’t you want me? You never wanted me, did you?”

“Do not let lies poison your good heart. I am here—” She presses her hand to Rey’s chest—the empty cage where her life’s blood no longer flows. “—I have always been and will always be right here with you. You are every thought, every breath I had in life. Even death cannot diminish my love.”

Her mother’s face comes into focus in front of her, solid now, like her hands. Her features are soft and youthful and Rey realizes that they had both died so young. Her hair is light, but her eyes are the same color as her own. Rey sees more of herself than she ever thought she would in the person she’d only known as a stranger in a distant dream. The emotions swell inside her and nearly overcome her. She can feel this love—deep and vast and unending. It is every wish that she could have had that in life. That she wouldn’t have been alone. Never deceived, or belittled, or betrayed.

“There is love waiting for you,” her mother tells her, as if understanding Rey’s fraught emotions and thoughts. “A better life. A freer life. If you want it.”

Rey wants it—she does—but she’s so tired. She feels like a child only wanting to curl into her mother’s lap and fall asleep until all her worries melt away. Young, strong arms wrap around her, just like in the memories she almost has, and hold her close. She squeezes her in and her hands rub Rey’s back. She hums and shushes her sobs and tells her it will all be all right. Rey feels something—a warm glow that settles into her pores and uplifts her. It solidifies in her limbs and thrums in her nerves.

“I am always with you, my Rey of the sun.”

Rey faces the footbridge again, now even clearer before her. “I just have to cross this bridge?” she asks because surely returning to life cannot be so easy.

“No.”

_Knew it._

"You have to want it. There is no bridge. It is you making a choice and believing and trusting your choice.”

“I can feel them, and how much they want me to come back.” And in that moment, a surge of guilt hits her. She would have given up her life with Poe and Finn and the life they could have made after all this was over. The friendships they would have built, the people they could have helped—the joy, the laughter, the love. “But I can’t do this for them,” she says as she takes one final look back at the vision of her mother.

Bolstered by the Force energy of her mother, life given once more, Rey knows she can’t choose life just because others want it for her. She has to want it for herself. And she does. She wants to feel springtime, and snow. She wants to eat new foods until she bursts. She wants to help Finn find his family and meet Poe’s father. And she wants to know a life with peace, free of fear and bondage. She wants to live a life that she makes on her own terms.

Her foot takes one step, and then another.

“You died,” Poe tells her, as if she’s not aware.

She nods and curls her fingers into his hair as he hovers close to her, snuggled up in their bed in their house in the life they’ve built.

“I felt it.”

She nods again. There had always been this part of them that was tied together, even before other parts of them had connected.

“It took you so long to come back.”

Rey wonders how long he’s been holding onto this conversation. “My body ceased functioning,” is how Rey likes to put it. “I still lived. There is no death, Poe.”

“Small comfort to those of us quite attached to our flesh-bags.” He seems to regret his choice in words and sighs as he kisses her. “I’m glad you came back. What was it like in the Force?”

“Dark, disconcerting,” are the words she decides on. “But not at all lonely. It was so full of energy and… love.”

“Sounds nice.”

“It was. I could have stayed.” It’s the first time she’s ever admitted out loud anything about what had happened in those minutes when life had fled her young, broken body. “But there was love out here, and a life I hadn’t had the chance to live.”

“I’m glad you chose to give that life a chance,” he whispers as he kisses her again.

“This life,” she corrects him with a smile. “This is the life I want.”


End file.
